


Titanium Heart

by erinaceous



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Science Fiction, androids and starships and wormholes oh my, eventual transhumanism i guess, fluff in space, many liberties with science taken
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 00:10:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6588922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erinaceous/pseuds/erinaceous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Humanity dwindles on a dying Earth. Alfred, desperate to survive, stows away on a starship bound for another solar system, but soon discovers that his new home might not be the second chance at life that he'd hoped for. The one person he can turn to for help is Ivan, the ship's technician, which wouldn't be so bad if Ivan wasn't a disembodied voice who could only speak to him through the starship itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The dry heat of the Floridian Desert made Alfred's threadbare shirt cling to his back. He wished he had been more sparing with his water, but he had been _so damn thirsty_. As he waited, crouched behind a long-empty container in the spaceport's loading bay, he thought longingly of the water butts back at the shack he called a home. They would certainly be emptied by now, though. The little band of survivors he had been tagging along with were going to need it all on the long trek north.

Not for the first time, Alfred wondered if he shouldn't be going with them. There had been rumours of forests in the far north, with lakes and squirrels and trees and _everything_. There wouldn't be any of that where he was going—if he survived the next ten minutes. Then again, Alfred knew that there wasn't a living person in Florida who hadn't heard those rumours, and he would be surprised if there was any forest left by the time he got there.

He was going to have to take his chances with the stars.

The rumble of treads on the white tiles startled him out of his thoughts. _Focus_. The others were leaving at sunrise. If he missed his chance, he really would be alone.

Alfred watched from behind the container as a boxy robot trundled past, its arms loaded with small crates. He had no fear that the robot might detect him—the technology was decades old, as he had discovered when he was making his way up here and accidentally walked out in front of one. It didn't even have heat sensors, not like the domestic androids he used to repair for a living, back when money was still relevant. That didn't exactly fill him with confidence, but he told himself it was just for efficiency. That was probably it. There was no point in high security when there was barely anyone left alive to break in, and Alfred hadn't seen another living person in weeks, other than his group. Everyone else had either fled north, or died. Still, he patted the knife in his pocket to make sure it was still there. He wouldn't hesitate to use it, if it came to that.

Anyway, he was pretty sure this place was supposed to be a secret. He only knew about it because he'd heard a rumour from a man who'd gone north several weeks ago, about a final mission to the colonies. He couldn't remember which colony it was, though he _did_ remember the comic the government had released when he was a kid, to promote humanity's new outposts. He still had it under his bed, and sometimes he would take it out and dream about working on the research station at Khonsu, on a moon nestled between the rings of a gas giant; or he would try to picture the floating cities of Aegir—though he knew the _really_ cool stuff was on Dellingr, which was supposed to be a lot like Earth was decades ago, except the comic showed it with forests of blood-red trees all year round. Even the imaginatively named Edge, balancing right on the far boundary of its habitable zone, sometimes featured in his fantasies, though there wasn't much there but ice and mines. Anything was better than here, but Alfred did hope the ship wasn't going to the Edge.

His heart pounding with anticipation, Alfred glanced around the hangar once more. When he was sure the coast was clear, he sprinted across the loading bay, his footsteps echoing around the vast empty space. He skidded to a halt in front of the shuttle's bulk, one hand resting on the metal that was warm from the heat of the day. He made it. He didn't think he'd felt anything so wonderful. He paused, listening. He expected to hear a shout, gunshots, an alarm, but the hangar remained quiet, the only sound the faint rumble of robot treads somewhere in the distance.

For a moment, Alfred let his hand linger on the shuttle's hull. It was different to the spaceships in his comics, sleeker and more streamlined, whereas the old shuttles had been huge clunky things. This one was barely a few metres long, and not much taller than Alfred was. Still, it would get him where he needed to go.

The hatch was on the other side of the shuttle, and it was already open. Alfred vaulted through, grinning when his landing made the metal floor give a satsfying _clang_.

His face fell when he saw the pilot.

He was sitting in the cramped cockpit, and he leaped to his feet at Alfred's entrance. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, his face pale.

Alfred gaped at him for a moment—he'd assumed the whole takeoff would be automated, after seeing the robots. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course they'd want someone to supervise. Everyone knew you couldn't trust robots with _everything_.

The pilot strode towards him, and Alfred realised with horror that he was reaching for the handgun in his belt.

There was a fire extinguisher on the wall next to him, and Alfred instinctively wrenched it free of its bracket and swung it at the pilot's head.

He had always been a good shot, and in the cramped shuttle, there was no room to dodge. The heavy metal cylinder glanced off the pilot's temple, and he staggered back. Gritting his teeth, Alfred hit him again, and this time the other man sank to his knees and crumpled on the floor, a faint groan passing his lips.

There was no blood, to Alfred's relief. If he saw blood splattered across the pilot's grey jumpsuit, he knew he would lose his nerve. It was bad enough as it was, the body at his feet and the fire extinguisher gripped in his sweating hands, as if he expected the pilot to leap up and attack him at any moment.

It was then that something caught his eye in the cockpit. Frowning, Alfred stepped over the pilot—he was still breathing, thank all the stars—and leaned over the chair to peer at the small screen set into the dashboard.

His stomach dropped—it was a countdown clock, and there were three minutes and twenty six seconds left.

It was counting down to take-off. What else could it be?

Cursing, Alfred hurried back over to the pilot and lifted him under the arms, before hefting him through the hatch as gently as he could. Still, it was quite a long drop, and the pilot's head cracked against the floor as he fell. Alfred leaped out after him, taking care not to land on him, and dragged him away from the shuttle. He turned him on his side—wasn't that what you were supposed to do when someone passed out?--before sprinting back to the shuttle and vaulting in, slamming the hatch shut behind him.

One minute and twelve seconds left. Alfred leaned his head back against the wall, his chest heaving. He'd so very nearly missed take-off. He'd been so close to being stranded in the desert for the rest of his life.

Just like that pilot would be—stuck in Florida with a concussion and no supplies. Alfred forced the stranger from his mind. He'd promised himself, standing on the searing tarmac of the long-abandoned car park outside, that he would do anything it took to escape. He wouldn't go back on that now, when he was so close to freedom.

Alfred yelped as the shuttle started to vibrate, and he leaped away from the wall as if it had burned him. The countdown clock on the dashboard was flashing thirty seconds, and Alfred stumbled towards it and slumped down in the single pilot's seat. He hoped this thing would be automated. He wouldn't be getting very far if it wasn't.

When the clock reached zero, a female voice rang out over the speakers. “Clear to begin take-off?” The sterile sound reverberated along the storage crates locked to the passage behind him.

“Yes!” Alfred said, fumbling with the harness with shaking fingers. “Yes, begin take-off!”

He blinked as the hangar door inched open, letting daylight flood the cavernous room. Alfred squinted against the sunlight and wondered if it would be as bright on his new home.

A siren wailed around him, and he barely had time to wonder if someone was finally coming to stop him before the shuttle rolled forward almost tentatively. Soon the smooth tiles gave way to concrete as the spacecraft reached the runway outside, and Alfred had to grip the arms of the chair as the shuttle gained speed. The runway had stood abandoned for at least a decade, it seemed. Weeds grew up through the tarmac and there were huge cracks in the surface that jolted him so hard he had to grit his teeth to keep from biting his tongue.

He wanted to look back, see if the pilot had woken and was desperately chasing after his shuttle, but he couldn't tear his eyes from the expanse of wasteland before him. They weren't going to take off in time, they were going to crash—

He was slammed back into his seat as the ground fell away from beneath him, and all he could see was the cloudless summer sky.

Alfred slumped, relieved, and swiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. He'd fully expected to end up full of bullet holes on the hangar floor, but somehow, he'd made it. Everything was going according to plan, and he was on his way to the stars.

After a minute spent catching his breath, he had to look away from the blinding sky. He leaned forward, peering over the dashboard and down the sleek nose of the shuttle. Below him lay the desert, parched and brown and devoid of life. Beyond that was the poisonous Atlantic, just as barren as the desert. The fish were gone, the whales poached to extinction. Far in the north, two hurricanes collided on the horizon.

He wasn't going to miss this planet. Surely anywhere would be better than here.

Eventually, the blue faded to black as the shuttle climbed higher and higher. For once, Alfred was glad he hadn't eaten anything today, because his stomach gave an unpleasant lurch as Earth's gravity lost its grip on him. Stars winked at him as the shuttle left the atmosphere, as if they were welcoming him into their midst. Despite what it had cost to get him here, Alfred couldn't stop himself grinning. His comics had plenty of pictures of stars, but they were nothing like the real thing. For a start, he could never have imagined there would be so _many_. Only the brightest were visible through the haze of the atmosphere, but now they crowded the void before him, white and yellow and red and blue.

Alfred leaned forward so far that his breath left a smudge on the window—and that was when he saw it.

The starship.

He felt a sudden pang. How long had the starship been waiting up here for its shuttle to return? How many times had it passed right over his head, even before he'd hatched his desperate plan to stow away on it?

It was not a large ship, though Alfred didn't really have anything to compare it to. It would probably have fit inside the hangar of the spaceport, and was shaped like a cigar, thicker in the middle and tapering smoothly at the ends. As the shuttle drew closer, he saw that it was divided into thirds, each section connected by a narrower tube.

The shuttle trembled as the thrusters fired, taking it to the end of the starship facing away from the Earth—the docking station, Alfred hoped. He had no idea what he would do if he had to dock the ship himself, so he sighed in relief when the words _automated docking in progress_ lit up on one of the screens before him.

It was as the shuttle glided along the length of the starship that Alfred could see the ship's name, printed on the white hull of the middle section. There were some words in a strange alphabet he couldn't read, though it looked sort of like an English alphabet if he squinted. Below it, though, was the name _Starship Hope_.


	2. Chapter 2

Some of Alfred's earliest memories were of holing himself up in his darkened room and watching old videos of the first missions to the colonies as society came crashing down around him.

The last mission had been to the Edge, that frozen wasteland so far away, in the same year Alfred was born. After that, when the first cracks began to show, the government had started to release his treasured comics to remind people they still had something to fight for. It had been too little, too late. Until now, the colonies had not received so much as a shipment of supplies.

If this mission was anything like the old ones, there would be only one human obstacle Alfred would have to overcome—the ship's steward, who was responsible for checking up on the ship as it travelled. Any other human cargo would have been put into hibernation weeks ago, and the rest of the mission would be in the figurative hands of AI. It saved resources and shortened a very long and very boring journey. It wasn't like there was a lot of scenery on the way to the colony.

As the _Hope_ loomed closer, Alfred pulled out his knife and let it float in the air before him, still in its faded leather sheath. It was old and battered, but he had never used it to kill a person before. Even if he hadn't stabbed the pilot back on Earth, he didn't see how he could get around it here. He chewed on his lip as the shuttle began its docking procedure. He'd have to just get on with it—he'd known he would have to kill someone from the second he first began planning to stow away. There was no going back now, literally.

The shuttle jolted as it slotted into its spot at the end of the _Hope_ , and hydraulics hissed as the hatch sealed itself to the main body of the ship. The shuttle was attached at the side, giving him a perfect view of the sunrise on the planet he was leaving behind. The Sun cresting the edge of the Earth was almost blinding, and he had to look away, swallowing down the sudden lump in his throat.

After a silent moment that felt more like an eternity, the hatch sprung open. Alfred freed himself from the harness and pushed himself over to the wall next to it. He hung on, listening, but he heard nothing. No people, no robots. Maybe the ship's steward would have to unload the shuttle himself. If that was the case, he didn't have much time.

Pocketing his knife again, Alfred manoeuvred himself through the hatch and the airlock and into the cramped docking bay. There were spaces for two more shuttles to dock, though they were empty. As Alfred clumsily made his way over to the door at the end—or was it the top?--of the bay, spindly creatures detached themselves from the walls and swarmed towards him, propelled by tiny jets of air. Alfred reached for his knife, heart in his throat, and it took him an instant to realise that the creatures were robots, not horrific mutant space spiders. _Robots_. In all the years he had worked with them, Alfred had never seen anything like those things.

The robots ignored him as he set to work on the control panel in the wall, loosening the door as silently as he could while holding the knife between his teeth. He heard their scuttling little legs as they swarmed into the shuttle and started to unload the various crates and boxes stored within, and the sound sent a shudder down his spine.

Finally the door slid open, only to reveal a man on the other side.

Alfred nearly swallowed the knife in shock, and the other man—who had to be the steward—yelped, pushing himself away from the door so he floated slowly away down the narrow corridor behind him.

He wasn't fast enough, though. Forcing the guilt from his mind, Alfred snatched the knife from between his teeth and lunged at the steward. The blade slid easily between his ribs, and when Alfred pulled it out, a spray of shimmering red droplets came with it.

The steward screamed, hands flying to his chest, and Alfred didn't give him the chance to fight back. This time he aimed for the throat, and the steward did not scream again.

Alfred pushed himself away from the body, his breath coming in wheezes. The steward's eyes seemed to be staring at him accusingly as the body drifted away down the passage. They were blue, like Alfred's, but now glassy and blank, and he had to look away.

Swallowing, he grabbed the steward by the sleeve, so he wouldn't have to touch his still-warm skin, and pulled him back into the loading bay. A trail of blood followed like a grotesque comet tail. He dreaded cleaning that up.

Luckily, the robots were still busy as Alfred pulled the steward's body through the loading bay and found the switch that opened the inner door to the airlock furthest from the one the shuttle occupied. Feeling sick with himself, he shoved the steward inside and closed the door, before flipping the other switch.

Inside the airlock chamber, a muffled siren blared three times, and then the outer door retracted into the ship. In an instant, the steward's body was blown out, spiralling away towards Earth.

Alfred couldn't get out of the docking bay fast enough. He slammed the door shut behind him. Like hell he was letting those robots into the main part of the ship when he had just murdered the only conscious crew member on board.

As soon as he had the thought, he wished he could take it back. He'd known all along that the steward would have to die, but the image of the droplets of blood glinting in the harsh lighting of the ship would still be burned into his brain for the rest of his life.

“Then you got your whole life to worry about it,” he told himself firmly. Now, there was other stuff he had to do.

First, he took off his shirt and used it to mop up the scattered blood droplets as best as he could, keeping his mind carefully blank as he did. He couldn't have that getting into the air vents.

When the air was clean again, he tied the bloodied shirt around his waist and set off along the passage. A long pole ran straight through it, so all he had to do was pull himself along.

After a minute or so, the passage began to branch off into smaller, dark corridors, lit only by a very faint bluish glow from the walls. He peered down one of the corridors, but couldn't make out what was down there. Computers, maybe. Alfred shrugged and moved on. It obviously wasn't the control room, and that was all he was interested in for the time being.

After he passed through that section of the ship, the passage narrowed again, and it was like crawling through a tunnel. By the time the passage widened into what Alfred guessed had to be the third and final chamber, his neck was aching from looking up and his hands were slipping on the pole where he had been gripping it so hard so he wouldn't float away.

H knew as soon as he entered that this chamber had to be the control room. One wall was covered top to bottom in computer screens, with a bank of controls and a single chair beneath it. The wall he was facing held a giant screen, showing the Earth looking like one of the blue marbles he had found in a cupboard in a long-abandoned house once.

Alfred tore his eyes away from his planet and pulled himself fully through the doorway, hooking his feet on the door frame so he didn't shoot off towards the ceiling. Some of the smaller screens were active, and one of them was showing another countdown—seventy two minutes. That had to be how long he had before the starship left Earth's orbit.

Then, Alfred caught sight of another screen in the bottom row. It was black, except for one line of bold white writing: URGENT MESSAGE ALERT.

Alfred's stomach flipped unpleasantly. Had he been discovered? He glanced anxiously up at the ceiling. There were no cameras that he could see, but that meant nothing. Maybe the steward had raised the alert before going down to the cargo bay.

He reached out until he could grab the arm of the chair and used it to pull himself over to the computer bank, not trusting himself to just push off like a real astronaut would. Like one of the heroes from his comics would. By the time he harnessed himself into the chair, his hands were shaking. He wasn't an astronaut, just some dumbass android repairs guy who was in too deep. It would be almost laughable, if he wasn't about to set off for some unknown star system, never to return. What the hell was he thinking?

He took a deep breath to calm himself, and then another. He couldn't freak out now, not when he'd just landed himself control of a freaking _starship_. He'd keep calm, or he'd end up dead. Before he could change his mind, Alfred leaned in to the microphone sticking out from the dashboard and hoped the ship took voice commands.

“Accept communication,” he said into it, his voice far steadier than he had expected.

For a moment, nothing happened, and Alfred wondered if he needed some kind of security clearance. Then, the text on the screen disappeared, replaced by a woman's face.

She was middle-aged, with her greying auburn hair pulled back in a tight bun and deep, worried creases around her mouth, made more obvious by the harsh light from a computer screen that illuminated her face in a bluish glow. Her clothes were smart, but rumpled, as if she had slept in them. She jumped when Alfred turned on the camera, and her frown instantly deepened.

“Are you the hijacker?” she hissed, leaning close to her microphone.

Alfred nodded mutely. He didn't know why, but the name _hijacker_ hurt. He knew he had no right to feel that way. Wasn't that exactly what he was?

“Listen to me,” the woman said, her blue eyes frantic. “Do you know where that ship is going? What its mission is?”

“No,” Alfred replied, gripping the arms of the chair so tightly his knuckles went white.

The woman glanced around her, before leaning in even closer. Alfred tried to look behind her, but the room was dark. “It's going to the Edge, and it's taking two dozen of our children with it.”

Alfred's heart sank. The Edge. The one place he had hoped he wouldn't end up, and this ship was bound there and there was nothing he could do about it. “Who are you?” he asked. “Where are you calling from?”

“Canada,” said the woman, glancing around nervously again. “I work for the space agency. There's only ten of us left. Listen to me, hijacker. I'll make a deal with you. You're not going to get off that starship before it leaves, and there's nothing anyone down here can do to stop you. We can't control that thing remotely, the Edge would never allow it. But there _are_ ways I can have you killed, if I was given the order. And I will be, if anyone finds out about you.”

“And are you going to tell anyone about me?” he said, feeling cold all over. He looked around the control room again, this time searching for anything the woman could use to kill him. Would it be lasers? Neurotoxin? Those awful spider things?

“No,” said the woman. “They're all busy or sleeping. I don't want to have to kill you. The ship needs a steward, none have ever sailed without one. I'll keep your murder of the real steward a secret if you swear on your life to get those children to the Edge safely.”

Alfred nodded. “I will.” And then, because he felt it was important for the woman to know he wasn't some inept criminal, he added, “I know about machines and AI and things. I used to repair them. I'll get this ship to the Edge.”

The woman pursed her lips. “You'd better. Remember, there's still an hour before the _Hope_ leaves. I'll keep your secret as long as you don't give me a reason not to.” The screen went dark, and Alfred had never felt more alone.

“Shit,” he breathed, tipping his head back and gazing up at the solid wall of computer screens before him. Sure, he had made a living repairing domestic robots and AI systems. This was something else.

He glanced at the countdown clock, noting that he still had another hour before the starship left Earth's orbit. Might as well get to know his vessel. Surely the chamber full of those computer-things was the best place to start.

Carefully, Alfred freed himself from the harness and manoeuvred himself back through the hatch and back along the pole that ran the length of the starship. Moving around without gravity was getting slightly easier now, but he still found himself longing for solid ground beneath his feet. _One day,_ he told himself grimly as he pulled himself through the empty passage connecting the control room to the ship's middle section. _I'll make it to the Edge, even if it takes years. Even if I freeze my ass off as soon as I step outside. I_ will _see the colony._

It was dim inside the computer chamber, with none of the harsh, sterile light of the smaller passage. Brushing his apprehension aside—what if he broke something important?--Alfred pushed off from the ladder and into the nearest side-passage.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He could make out faint strips of blue light, and as his eyes became accustomed, he saw that they ringed bulky coffin-like things.

The children. Of course. Where else would they have been?

Alfred peered closer at the nearest box and put his hand against the cold metal casing. There was no window into it, but he could feel a vibration from deep within, and he soon became aware of a low drone that surrounded him. He swallowed—maybe he wasn't so alone after all.

Something caught Alfred's eye when he glanced down the row of boxes. At the far end of the corridor, the glow was brighter than it was here, spilling out and glinting on the boxes around it. Frowning, Alfred pulled himself down towards it, his stomach knotted in apprehension. He guessed the boxes were some sort of life support system. What the hell was he supposed to do if one of them was broken?

As he moved, Alfred felt his fingers brushing over something engraved into the surface of each box. He paused to read it, and saw that they were names—Candace Hopkins, Joe Miller, Georgina Marsh, Stefano Delgado—on and on and on. Swallowing, Alfred forced his eyes to focus only on what lay ahead, and not on the names of those whose lives were now in his hands.

Finally, Alfred reached the end of the corridor. After the dimness, the glow emanating from the wall was almost blinding. He blinked a few times to clear his vision, and then again to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

Set into the wall, a little way apart from the rest of the boxes, was a glass tube, and inside the tube was a distinctly human shape. Alfred moved closer and grasped the sides of the tube so it was the only thing keeping him from sailing away into the darkness.

The man inside the tube seemed to be unconscious. Alfred had owned a science fiction comic once, and there was a story about a guy in a tube just like this one. Maybe he was a weird science experiment. He was certainly full of wires and tubes of his own, disappearing under his jumpsuit and into his pale skin and shock of blond hair. He lay in a metal frame, with thin clamps around his arms, waist, and legs. His face was peaceful, as if he were sleeping, lips slightly parted. After a moment's hesitation, Alfred tapped the glass with a nail. Nothing happened.

Alfred reluctantly set off back down the corridor, leaving the strange man to his sleep. He was clearly not a regular passenger, and Alfred wondered if he really wanted to know what he was doing there.

Once back in the control room, he settled back into the seat in front of the computer bank and began to half-heartedly poke around the ship's programming. It was more complex than anything he'd ever encountered—though of course he wasn't expecting anything else—and he worried about touching something wrong and fucking up the ship before it had even left Earth's orbit. Which, Alfred noted with a twinge of excitement tainted by dread, it would do in exactly thirty four minutes.

He was scrolling through the pages of files on the passengers when something caught his eye. The icon next to the file was small, but Alfred instantly knew it was the same man he had seen in the glass tube.

He hesitated. This was probably a private file, and he had no business snooping.

But he knew there was something different about this man. He'd probably be on this ship for years. If there was something weird going on with one of his fellow passengers, didn't he have a right to know?

Alfred opened the file, only to find it almost completely blank.

Some basic details were there—the man's name was Ivan Braginsky, he was male, and he was 193 centimetres tall and weighed 130 kilograms, though he sure didn't look it. Other than that, there was nothing. No country of origin, no medical information, no personal history, not even an age. At the bottom of the form was the only other box that had been filled in, stating that his next of kin was Yekaterina Braginskaya, but it didn't even say how they were related.

Alfred stared at the screen in confusion. There must have been some kind of mistake. Things were so chaotic on Earth, it was reasonable that someone had messed up when they were registering the passengers, even for someone with an important-sounding job title like 'technical consultant', as the tiny text below Ivan's name proclaimed him to be. Even so, when Alfred opened a few of the other passengers' files, everything seemed to be there.

He shrugged to himself as he closed the personnel files and continued his snooping through the _Hope'_ s programming. Probably just some admin error.

He was almost beginning to grow bored—a large portion of the programming was in another language, quite possibly the same one he had seen printed on the side of the ship—when a program name in English caught his eye.

_Hibernation communicator._

Was that what he thought it was? Alfred had no idea if a thing like that was possible, but who knew what kind of things the colonists had invented while they were away from Earth? None of the _Hope_ 's passengers were actually dead, after all—or at least he hoped so. He opened the program and waited for a few seconds while it started up.

Suddenly, a man's voice crackled over the speaker overhead, and Alfred would have jumped out of his seat were he not firmly strapped in.

“ _Zdravstvuyte._ _Eto Ivan Braginsky. Chem ya mogu tebe pomoch'?”*_

_Ivan Braginsky._ The man he had seen in the glass tube, with a body full of wires and a blank personnel file. The hairs on the back of Alfred's neck prickled, though he couldn't pinpoint what made him uneasy.

“Um. Hello?” Alfred said, swivelling around in his chair. He wasn't sure where to direct his voice, so he tried to speak to the cramped room at large. “Do...do you speak English?”

“I can if you wish me to,” said Ivan Braginsky's disembodied, heavily-accented voice, “though Captain Yurkov could not. What have you done with him?”

Alfred swallowed, remembering how the captain's body had tumbled out into the void, how Alfred had mopped up the blood with his own shirt. “I killed him,” he said, his throat tight. They would find out what he had done eventually. What was the point in lying?

“Oh,” said Ivan, sounding far more flippant than someone who had just heard a murder confession should. “I never liked him. You seem far more interesting.”

“I—I do?” Alfred stammered, glancing nervously around the control room. Ivan had to be watching him from somewhere, but he could see no obvious cameras. Cheeks burning, he snatched his shirt from around his waist and pulled it on.

“Yes. You are a stowaway, yes?”

“I'm escaping Earth.”

Ivan's tone darkened slightly. “You'll have to be careful when we get to the Edge. The General won't like that.”

“The General?” Alfred swallowed. Of course he had known deep down that he would be in more trouble than he could imagine when the starship reached its destination, but he had squashed those fears down as he planned his escape from Earth. Now, they came bubbling to the surface, and the _Hope's_ metal walls suddenly felt far too confined.

“He runs the colony, and that was one of his men you've just murdered.”

“It was self-defence,” Alfred said automatically, but now he knew the slain captain's name, he wasn't so sure. Could they have worked something out? Had Yurkov needed to die?

Ivan _hmm_ ed, and Alfred could almost picture him quirking an eyebrow. “If you get the ship's cargo to the Edge safely, he may just believe you.”

“Those kids.”

“American children with rich or influential parents,” Ivan explained. “The Edge needed more people, young people, but there was some kind of problem with launching a ship from Russia, where our colonists originally came from.” He paused, as if he were shrugging. “I don't know the details. There were desperate American parents with money and space shuttles, and now their children are here.”

Ivan's tone had turned hard, and Alfred felt slightly uneasy. “And why does the Edge want young people?” he asked, wondering if he was going to regret doing so.

“Infertility,” said Ivan. “On the way to the Edge, the first colonisers were exposed to radiation of some sort. They can't have children. That's why our new friends are encased in lead while they hibernate, as you may have noticed.”

Alfred shuddered. He couldn't put his finger on it, but Ivan was starting to creep him out. Maybe it was the apparent omnipresence. “So, what's this Edge place actually like?” he asked, trying to steer the conversation towards something that wouldn't make him feel weird. “I wanna know what to expect when I meet this General of yours.”

“Cold,” Ivan said immediately. “Always cold. It's right on the far side of the habitable zone. And dark. The nights are long and the days are dim. We have to live underground, and sometimes we go weeks without seeing daylight, if the snows are bad enough.”

“Oh,” said Alfred. “Well, I always wanted to go to another planet. I'll just have to make the best of it,” he told Ivan, trying to sound chipper. He'd known the Edge was cold from his comics, but in truth, Alfred could not remember what a true winter felt like. He had to wonder if he'd ever even experienced one.

“I'm sure you're going to try,” said Ivan. “You should be disconnecting now. You want to be in hibernation before we go.”

“Hibernation?” said Alfred, startled.

“You didn't think you'd have to stay awake for the whole journey, did you?” Ivan replied, his voice tinged with amusement. “It takes years to reach the Edge. You really don't know what you are doing, do you?”

“No,” Alfred admitted. “I figured I'd just work it out as I went along.”

A breeze from the air vents in the floor ruffled Alfred's hair, and he realised Ivan had somehow managed to sigh through the hibernation communicator. “You'll find your stasis chamber in the room behind you. It's not hard to use. Just make sure you take your clothes off before you get in.”

A second later, a message scrolled across the nearest computer screen: HIBERNATION COMMUNICATION DISCONNECTED. Alfred suddenly felt very alone as he was left staring at a blank screen.

He felt somehow detached from his body as he freed himself from the harness and pushed over to the single small window. There was nothing left for him on his home planet, but he still wanted to say goodbye.

While Alfred had been sneaking onto starships and murdering their captains and talking to weird men in glowing tubes, night had fallen over North America. Half the continent was blanketed in darkness, the other half glowing russet and auburn in the sunset. It was difficult to see through the haze of the clogged atmosphere, but down on the surface were little pinpricks of light scattered over the land. The glow was brighter in what remained of the forests in the far north, where the remnants of humanity had gathered as their time dwindled. Somewhere down there, Alfred knew, were mission control and the parents of all the children whose lives were now in Alfred's incapable, inexperienced hands. He swallowed, and had to look away from the window before the guilt became anything more than an itch at the back of his mind.

He found his hibernation tank exactly where Ivan had said it would be, in a small side-room at the back of the control room. He hadn't noticed the room at first, as the door fit so seamlessly into the smooth white walls, but one touch of Alfred's hand and it retracted, allowing him inside. He decided not to worry about how it had admitted him, as the ship surely could not have recognised his fingerprint, and just be glad that it had.

The room was tiny, barely big enough to turn around in, and if Alfred was much taller he would have hit his head on the sloped ceiling. The hibernation tank took up one whole wall, and the opposite wall held some kind of pod, which was much sleeker than the hibernation chamber, but still took up more room than Alfred thought was really necessary. The final addition to the room was a locker, like the ones Alfred had seen in the various abandoned high schools he had explored. Overall, the whole thing looked a lot like a prison cell, with its featureless white walls and confined space. Even so, Alfred wasn't going to complain. If this was what it took to get him away from Earth, he would happily endure it.

On the wall above the hibernation chamber was a small flat computer screen. Alfred pressed the button on the edge to turn it on, and found that the layout was the same as the screens on the computer bank in the main room. One file on the desktop was labelled “HIBERNATION GUIDE,” and when he tapped it, a text document opened up before him.

Alfred scanned the words with growing dismay. This thing wanted him to let the chamber fill with some kind of hibernation fluid, sit in it butt naked, and then breathe it in. He was going to have to drown himself in science jelly.

Steeling himself, Alfred unzipped his threadbare jeans. Behind him, the hibernation chamber filled with green fluid that had a consistency and colour not unlike snot. _Whatever it takes to get to that damn colony,_ he thought grimly as he stuffed his clothes into the locker and slammed the door shut.

For a moment, Alfred hung there naked in space as he stared at the disgusting gloop before him. It was deep enough that he would be able to submerge himself fully in it, and he hoped he'd read the instruction manual right. What a way to go, if it went wrong.

When he could put it off no longer, Alfred pulled himself over to the hibernation chamber. It was covered with a membrane-like thing, that kept the gloop in the chamber but let him gingerly put first his legs, then the rest of him inside.

He'd never been submerged fully in anything before. Alfred had never known a time when there was enough water to take a bath, and the Floridian Desert was devoid of any lakes or rivers he could have swum in. The shock of being engulfed in the hibernation fluid sent adrenaline surging through his body, but almost immediately it gave way to a sluggish feeling. The hibernation fluid was warm, and Alfred was awfully tired. Through the fog encroaching on his mind, he remembered the instructions to breathe in as deeply as he could.

The fluid flooded his lungs, and before he could muster another coherent thought, Alfred fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

 

* * *

 

* “Hello. This is Ivan Braginsky. How may I help you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 'other language' Alfred keeps seeing is Russian, but Alfred just doesn't recognise it. I'm writing the Edge as a Russian colony, and though Russian is their main language, quite a few people speak English so they can communicate with other colonies or Earth, or they just learned it before leaving for the new colony. When Ivan speaks Russian, I'm writing in a Latin alphabet. I'm not sure if this is 'right' but it's definitely what I prefer to read, as I can't read Cyrillic that well so it just sounds like a blank in my head lol. Also, I don't speak Russian either so please feel free to correct any mistakes when I do use it. 
> 
> This chapter felt kind of flat, but things will hopefully pick up now that Ivan is in the picture. I'm really looking forward to getting to write the Edge and General Winter, tbh. Though I will kind of miss Earth because I tried to go for a kind of World War Z feel (the book not the movie)? Especially the chapter with the astronauts trapped on the ISS and they look down and see all these campfires scattered across the world. I just love that book so much lmao it's actually kinda sad.
> 
> Updates will be quite slow as my A-levels start in a couple of weeks (AAAAAAAAA) and I'm super busy.

**Author's Note:**

> This is an expansion of the one-shot I posted a while ago, Without Dreaming (I know it's been a really long time since I posted that...). I might come back and edit certain parts of the chapters, because what I'm doing with this story is really different to how I usually write, where I'll do a couple of drafts of the whole story before I even think about publishing anything, and I haven't written in third person for a long time either. I'm just writing this as I go because I know it'll never see the light of day otherwise, lol.
> 
> And if you want to know why Alfred basically flies a plane to space.....there's a thing called Skylon which is a rocket that takes off like an aeroplane and is reusable for like 200 flights and is pretty cool, or it would be if it had been built yet. 
> 
> Also, sorry Ivan isn't in this chapter. He's in the next one though!
> 
> (If you want to follow me on tumblr for info about updates and stuff like that, my personal blog is aphwesteros and my writing/hetalia blog is without-dreaming but I'm still finishing the theme and all that. Also might be changing the url at some point but idk yet).


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